


The Song of Rappaccini

by Isis



Category: Rappaccini's Daughter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crueltide, F/M, Inspired by Poetry, Pastiche, Poetry, Sorry Not Sorry, Yuletide, trochaic tetrameter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:03:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written "Rappaccini's Daughter".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of Rappaccini

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeCarabas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/gifts).



Downward through the evening twilight  
In the days that are forgotten  
In the unremembered ages  
From the house of Rappaccini  
From his greenhouse came Beatrice  
Came the poisonous Beatrice.  
She was sporting with her flowers  
Playing with a spray of blossoms  
When her lover Giovanni  
With the beauty of the moonlight  
Tried to win her from her father.  
Dark behind him rose the garden  
Rose the deep and gloomy garden  
With the flowers that bore toxins  
And the toxins worked to change him.  
Oh, alas for poor Beatrice  
For she took the antitoxin  
And in anguish died deserted  
By her lover, false and faithless  
For he did not drink the serum  
But he stayed to tend the flowers  
In the greenhouse full of poison  
Waiting for the next young maiden  
With the beauty of the moonlight  
Who might come to smell his flowers  
Who might come to try to save him  
From the house of Rappaccini  
From the deep and gloomy garden.

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed that "Rappaccini" has the same number of syllables as "Hiawatha", and then this happened. As Hawthorne doesn't tell us what became of Giovanni, I took the liberty of imagining an ending.


End file.
